Allard on Ethics
BY ERIC GAUF, LAW III
At the opening of Allard Hall, Peter Allard was somewhat reluctant
to step into the spotlight, but once there, he had very important things
to say. His speech is available at http://bit.ly/qaUZb2 and is excerpted it below. He spoke particularly forcefully on the topic of ethics,
and he was gracious enough to grant an interview to the Legal Eye.
From the speech delivered at the opening Allard remarked:
“It was during my time at UBC that I grew to appreciate how
the law affected every aspect of our lives. On looking back over
my many years in law, there was no more important class in
my mind, than the first year course in ethics. “Honesty”, “integrity” and the unofficial “smell test” are the hallmarks of
the Rule of Law, and with the Rule of Law comes justice. It fosters to this day a sense that the Rule of Law is, and should be,
accessible to, and respectful of, every single human being.
Many of you know or can expect that the practice of law can
be a grind. I have deep respect for those who “do the grind” year
in and year out in their ethical service to society. But I have an
even greater respect for those who believe that buried deep within
each legal strategy or decision must be a social contract and eq-

Photo taken at the Official Opening of Allard Hall by Zoe Si

uity that provides for the long term greater good in society, no
matter how trivial the task, no matter how small the retainer.
Our profession has more impact on our society than any other.
When we do our job well, we see that the Rule of Law is upheld and
we protect our clients, our neighbors and fellow citizens against
the vagaries of unchecked abuses of power and corruption. If we
didn’t do this, day in and day out, we would lose our freedom. It

Post-Riot Recommendations
BY ALEX BLONDIN, LAW III
In early September a third-party, investigative report commissioned to establish the reasons behind the downtown
Vancouver riots following the Canucks’ Game 7 defeat during the Stanley Cup playoffs was released. This report proposed recommendations to avoid a repeat of these events
– particularly because Vancouver prides itself on hosting several large public events for its residents throughout the year.
One proposal, encouraged by Police Chief Jim Chu, is to establish “airport-style” screening at downtown-bound Skytrain
stations on nights where such events would take place in the
downtown core. This proposed screening would presumably
take the form of bag and surface body-searches (pat-downs)
and sobriety examinations to catch illicit alcohol and weapons. This proposed screening would be intended to deter intoxicated and/or armed persons from joining the festivities.
The police chief explained that every Skytrain passenger would be subjected to these searches before boarding at
downtown-bound skytrain stations, including those stops
as far along the line as Scott Road in Surrey. Refusal to submit to the searches would bar an individual from boarding.
Those with a basic understanding of Charter rights
should have their red flags handy and raise them now.

The fundamental rules regulating searches and seizures, as derived
from section 8 of the Charter, state that police may only perform
a search upon a person where they have a reasonable suspicion to
believe that that person has committed a crime. At this preliminary stage, only a pat-down search is allowed, and only insofar as
to ensure officer safety (mainly, its purpose is to search for weapons). In order to search bags or inside otherwise inconspicuous
pockets, police must make a formal arrest – which requires reasonable and probable grounds to believe that a crime was committed.
In regards to the police chief ’s proposal, it must either be assume dthat
(a) the police have a reasonable suspicion to believe that every

single passenger boarding a downtownbound train from every station as far back
as those in Surrey has or is committing a
crime, or (b) the police are given extraordinary powers in these specific circumstances that elevate their ability to conduct
searches and seizures. It can’t reasonably
be believed that the first option is in any
way realistic, so the justification must be
within the framework of the second option
– particularly as we can see similar situations where this is already taking place.
The Canada Border Services Agency,
for example, has much broader powers of
search and seizure than ordinary police.
Consequently citizens crossing the border
have less stringent Charter protection than
in other places other than the border – an
acceptable concession allowed under the
Customs Act. Only reasonable grounds of
suspicion are needed to perform searches
and seizures, with more onerous searches
requiring proportionally more suspicion.
Closer to home, at events in Vancouver like
the Davie Street Party during Pride week,
police cordon off a section of the city at all
but a few checkpoints, thereby controlling
entry to this event. At these checkpoints,
the police search bags before allowing entry.
The Canadian Border Services Agency
is empowered by strict national security
laws and the Customs Act, and the Davie
Street Party – while public – is fenced off
and inaccessible but for the checkpoints.
Only those people seeking to enter the

latter by the checkpoints are searched –
while not every single person getting off
at Yaletown, Granville, Burrard, or Waterfront Skytrain stations is searched.
What justification exists to legitimize such an immensely broad increase of search and seizure powers?
The riot report cites a need to control the
number of people who attend open public
events, and the impossibility of controlling
the type of people who attend these events
(those who are drunk, those who seek to
distribute alcohol, those who aim to instigate riots, or those who pose a risk to public
safety). While other alternatives were proposed, such as not holding any further major downtown public events which was an
idea of the police chief, these were promptly turned down by Mayor Robertson.
Also proposed was closing off large areas and using ticketed entry at checkpoints like the Davie Street Party. This
proposal was written off as being unrealistic when handling Game 7-sized
crowds of more than 150 000 people.
Implementing and enforcing stricter public intoxication laws was also proposed, but
again the problems raised were those of
feasibility of enforcement for larger crowds.
The sheer size of the crowds represents the
main obstacle to any sort of arrangement to
assure public order. With smaller crowds, an
“unrealistic” option like checkpoints could
be valid, rather than the proposed skytrain
searches which not only violate Charter rights, but seem unnecessarily costly.

The riot report found that Vancouver
hosts an average of 13 annual events that
draws crowds of more than 100,000 people.
It also concluded that the damages caused
by the riots were an estimated 2 million
dollars. It is safe to assume, however, that
very few of these events would result in
Game 7-style riots. However, for the purpose of some dirty calculations, let’s assume
that one out of thirteen events results in
such damages. I wonder how the $2 million
per year damage claim fares in comparison
to the cost of hiring police officers to man
the city’s 47 Skytrain stations on those 13
nights, paying them to conduct at least 1.3
million illegal searches, and the legal costs
from defending any subsequent lawsuits alleging Section 8 violations of the Charter.
A quick Charter review for students: the
second stage of the Oakes test requires
that the Charter-breaching means chosen
to achieve an important societal objective (in this case, illegal searches to assure
public safety during large events) must
be reasonable and demonstrably justified. There must be a rational connection
to the objective, the means should impair
a person’s rights as little as possible, and it
must be proportional to the degree of intrusion of the Charter right. Broad spectrum
bag-searches and pat-downs to every person boarding a train heading in the general direction of an event that said person
may not even be going to, costing the city
more money than the damage it prevents,
can hardly be justified in this manner.

Dennis Edney Lecture Review
BY FATHIMA CADER, LAW 3
“Human rights have a dysfunctional relationship with justice. The language is
certainly beautiful, but it’s all dressed up
with nowhere to go,” contended Dennis Edney at UBC Law on September 15.
Edney worked from 2004 to 2011 on Omar
Khadr’s defence against charges stemming
from the 2002 death of a US soldier. Khadr is
Canadian. He was 15 at the time. American
forces interrogated him for three months in
the US-operated Bagram Theatre Detention
Facility in Afghanistan, before transferring
him to Guantanamo Bay. He remains there.
In 2005, Khadr’s chief Bagram interrogator, Sergeant Joshua Claus, was found guilty
of offences relating to the routine torture
and homicide of Bagram prisoners. Claus
received a five-month prison sentence. In
2010, he testified at Khadr’s military trial.
In April 2009, the Federal Court ruled
Canada was complicit in the US’s torture of
Khadr. It ordered Ottawa to seek his repatriation. The Federal Court of Appeal agreed.
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled
Canada was violating Khadr’s human rights,
but was not obliged to seek his repatriation.
In October 2010, Khadr pled guilty in
a military trial to terrorism-related offences, in exchange for Canada’s promise
to repatriate him by October 2011 to serve
the rest of his prison sentence in Canada.
On September 20, the Conservatives tabled their controversial omnibus Bill C-10.
It adds “additional criteria” to decisions
about whether or not to transfer Canadian
offenders to Canada to serve sentences.
After the trial, Edney declared Khadr
“would have confessed to anything, including the killing of John F. Kennedy, just to
get out of this hellhole.” There are nearly
800 prisoners in Guantanamo. Only four
have been charged and given a trial. Detainees cannot see evidence against them.
“I went into Guantanamo Bay as a lawyer and I came out as a broken father,” said
Edney at UBC. “I never thought that in my
lifetime I would go to such an evil place and
see such evil being done.” He drew special
attention to three camps: Camps 5 and 6 are
“designed for enhanced interrogation tac-

tics: torture” and said “We are not allowed to
talk about [Camp 7]. We have prisoners in
there who came from Europe, about a year
and a half ago, and they’re going to be there
forever, because there’s no one there to help.”
Edney denounced Canada’s government
for perpetuating a culture of fear in the
camp’s defence. Edney stated that “there has
always historically been terrorism,” which
means “this war on terror – if allowed to be
one – is unlike any other, because it is never-ending.” Accordingly, the last decade has
been marred by “habeas corpus being abandoned, secret courts being created to hear secret evidence, guilt inferred by association,
torture and rendition nakedly justified.”
Edney noted that after 9-11 “the US government detained hundreds, if not thousands, of people of colour on the suspicion of terrorist activity, some of them up
to a year, all without charges.” He pointed
out that few were found to be connected
with terrorism, but many are still being
held without formal charges. Thus, Guantanamo “provides powerful evidence of
how America and the West are making
war on terror synonymous with the war
on Islam. No white Anglo-Saxon goes to
Guantanamo Bay. Any American picked
up for terrorism offences gets due process
in a federal court system in New York.”

“I went into Guantanamo
Bay as a lawyer and I
came out as a broken
father”

One audience member suggested President Barrack Obama’s failure to realise
his election promise to shut the camp
down indicates it has a purpose. Edney
responded that the camp primarily functions as “an important propaganda tool.”
He said the Obama administration has in
fact “systematised” the culture of torture
normalised under George W. Bush’s administration by disallowing victims of extraordinary rendition from suing the US.
Edney censured “lazy” media and academics for “slotting events into a sort of juicy
clash of civilisations story,” as exemplified
by coverage of Anders Behring Breivik’s

3

terrorist attack in Oslo, where he killed 69
people, avowedly to protect Europe from
Muslims. Edney said that immediately
“media organisations began reporting on
jihadist organisations,” which “fit perfectly
the story we have all been telling each other
since 9/11 that who else, who else could be
so hateful, so crazy, so disrespectful of life
but Muslims.” He noted Breivik is a white
Norwegian Christian, but “we don’t hold
Christians or conservatives or liberals responsible for Brievek’s despicable acts.”
Edney said that since 9/11, “race, ethnicity, and religion have become proxies
for suspected terrorist activity, which in
turn has become a pretext for the application of Canadian immigration laws in
an unequal manner towards Arabs, South
Asians, Muslims and so on.” In an apparent nod to Bill C-4, the anti-refugee bill
that the Conservatives tabled in September despite widespread condemnation, he
observed, “We just have to listen to media
descriptions coming out of Ottawa when
we talk about refugees today. We call them
queue jumpers and potential terrorists.”
Edney also criticised the public’s willingness to be lulled into complicity. He
described the transfer of the prisoners to
Guantanamo “hooded and shackled for
transportation across the Atlantic” as reminiscent of eighteenth century slave ships. He
insisted that “no knowledge of international humanitarian conventions is needed to
understand that what was being witnessed
was simply unlawful.” He also blamed public apathy for “allowing anti-Muslim sentiment to become part of our mainstream
conversations.” He said, “I say to you we
cannot tackle manifestations of intolerance, unless we learn and understand how

(Continued on page 5)

4
(Continued from page 1)
is more than eternal vigilance that is the price of freedom but a
strong and moral judicial activism to enforce these concepts.”
ERIC: Your speech raised the topic of ethics, and on that
topic, is there a particular moment or instant that you are
willing to speak about, that crystallized your thoughts?
PETER: Every day, in dealing with clients, one is dealing with ethics.
One early memory of an example relates to a lawyer at one
of the firms I was practicing with, who was preparing mortgages and assignments for people who really didn’t need to go
through a broker. I remember a retired teacher from Penticton who should have been paying a maximum of 8% per annum
for a house with no debt who was being charged 16% and then
our client would assign that mortgage and take their substantial fees or “lift” and not have to deal with the borrower again.
After a short time, I advised the senior real estate lawyer involved that I refused to participate in processing these unconscionable loans and suffered his wrath and possible dismissal.
I had one real estate client who came in with his son to prepare a will. The real estate client had given some property to his
son and wanted the will prepared so that the property would
revert back to him in the event of his son’s death. I told him at
my office door, “I’m sorry, you can’t come in, it’s a rule of the
Law Society that I have to take instruction from your son and
him alone.” Oh, he was mad at me. You deal with these ethical issues every day. I might have paid for that, and lost some
business, but I didn’t care, those were my ethical obligations.
ERIC: Your twin brother poked his head in the door midanecdote, and there was a distinct note of amusement in your
voice when you waved him off, saying, “I’m being interviewed.”
PETER: That wasn’t so much amusement as it was a grimace as Chuck has been dealing with his own very real Canadian deregulation story and the misery that has gone with it.
After a lengthy process at the CRTC in Ottawa, the Commission, under the late Charles Dalfen, in 2006 granted my brother’s company an English Pay Television License across Canada.
Most of the major Broadcasting Distribution Undertakings (
BDU’s) either intervened or made their own license applications.
The CRTC decided that the existing regional Pay Television licensees had had no competition for 30 odd years, and had become very
profitable, and that Canadians needed more consumer choice and
competition, required the usual promises to invest a percentage of
revenues into Canadian programming with input from all provinces.
The Commission did not grant a right to buy all programming but did order a “must carry” requirement to
the BDU’s of 6 channels, including two HDTV channels.
Rather than support the Commission’s desire to establish more
consumer choice and work with the new licensee to provide that
choice, the two existing regional licensees of pay television immediately set out to circumvent that decision by trying to tie
up as much studio and programming exclusives as possible.
Several BDU’s set out to frustrate and strangle the new licensee
by delaying implementation of the “must carry” rules while trying to bleed a new licensee to death, contrary to their own registered (NYSE) Business Standards of Ethics and with their strong

Vol. 9, No. 2
October 2011
c/o 1822 East Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
http://faculty.law.ubc.ca/legaleye/
legaleye.ubc@gmail.com
Printed by Horizon Publications
Press run: 900 copies
The Legal Eye acknowledges the people of the Musqueam
Nation on whose land we publish.
The Legal Eye is published eight times a year during the academic
year by law students at the University of British Columbia.
Editorial Policies: “We’re irreverent but not rude.” The Legal Eye
prioritizes articles written by UBC Law students, but others are
welcome to contribute. We reserve the right not to publish materials we deem to be inappropriate and to edit for length and content.

cash flows earned under their 30 plus years of quasi-monopolies.
Several years later, Quebecor, which has a potential 750,000
English subscribers and made an application for the same English Pay Television license, has not had to carry this service due
to a special Quebec French language provision. If Quebecor had
received the license, no one has any doubt that the English speaking Montreal consumers would not only have had this service
from day one but would have had it aggressively sold to them.
The late Ted Rogers’ broadcasting legacy has to a great degree been dismantled to the benefit of other more profitable technological developments such as cellular and internet developments at the expense of the Broadcasting Act that
allowed them over the years to flourish and lead technologically.
Ted Rogers would be outraged if he saw that Bell
and some of the telcos are outselling Rogers in the
sale of broadcasting services as much as eight to one.

continued on page 8

5
Goodbye Curtis Library

Photo by Christina Gray

BY CHRISTINA GRAY, LAW II
As school began in early September a cloud of dust began to
settle around Allard Hall from the demolition of the old Curtis
library. The demolishment of the old library marked the official
“end of an era,” as class of 1999 alumni, Kyle Hyndman remarked.
The George F. Curtis building opened its doors on September 17, 1976, after significant expansion and renovation of the original 1951 structure.. It’s rumored from former professor Ermeritus Donald MacDougall, that when the
new law building opened students showed-up in prison uniforms to show their dismay for the Brutalist style building – a
style that is more known for its architectural style at prisons.
Le Corbusier coined the term Brutalism from the pouring of “raw concrete” to erect the foundation of post-war
buildings. This type of building structure can be seen all
over the UBC Campus, most notably Arthur Erickson’s
Museum of Anthropology, which also opened in 1976.
This style of architecture is known for having roots in socialist utopia philosophy. In the 1970s, the socialist discourse ran
strong within Canada. The Federal Liberal government had a
near-coalition with the NDP and pushed-through many socially
progressive initiatives. This period also marked the opening of
more buildings within already established universities as well as

Continued from page 3

the constant use of fear pervades our everyday life, and how that
fear is being used to influence how you and I think and how you
and I act. It’s that same manipulation of fear that has allowed military escapades into countries beyond those who bombed the Twin
Towers. It is that same message that has been exploited by participating countries to reduce civil liberties and infringe upon human rights by allowing such places as Guantanamo Bay to exist.”

many universities across Canada. It could be inferred that there
was more public funding for education during this time period.
In the 1970s, there were also higher enrollment to fund expansion of universities, as baby-boomers began their university
education. The Curtis building reflected the need for the student
body to expand within a new and more permanent structure.
The Curtis building was also made to withstand the test of
time. Second year law student, Andrew Guaglio, joked that
“it’s not the cold war anymore, they don’t need to make buildings like that anymore”. The building resembled a large bomb
shelter, and as demonstrated from the amount of time it has taken to
dismantle the building, it certainly could have withstood an attack.
Students, faculty, and staff could hear and see the thunderous drills from the high-reach excavators used to demolish
the Curtis building. Over the course of the first few weeks of
school, students from the UBC Law Review office on the fourth
floor watched whole floors crumble. After a few week the construction team had taken down most of the structure, leaving rebar and the cement foundation left to be broken down.
Students will no longer have to endure the coldest library oncampus, which made coffee tepid within a matter of minutes. The
new UBC law library is a place where students can study their
ratio ratio decidendi with coffee that will actually stay warm.
Edney ended his lecture by reiterating the need for urgent action: “Not only does it [Guantanamo] continue to exist, they continue building it. Guantanamo is going to be
there for a long, long time, unless you do something.” And
that “the only crime equal to wilful inhumanity is the crime
of indifference, the crime of silence, the crime of forgetting.”

Public Interest Opportunities
BY TRACY WACHMANN, CSO
There are many opportunities at UBC Law
for you to develop practice skills through
volunteer and paid positions in public interest law. They are available whether you
have come to law school with the desire to
use your law degree to further social or environmental justice or if you plan to pursue
a more traditional career path. Along the
way you will be able to explore what type of
work and practice settings you prefer and
gain the satisfaction of providing help to
clients and organizations who may not otherwise have the benefit of legal assistance.
What is Public Interest Law?
Public interest law can generally be described as legal work on behalf of individuals, groups and causes that are underserved. More specifically, it is work using
legal skills that is intended to: secure justice
for disadvantaged people and underserved
communities; assert, protect and defend
human rights, civil rights and civil liberties; preserve and protect and defend the
world’s health and resources for the public good; or, promote the public’s interests
protected by agencies or governments.
Where is it Practised?
There are many settings in which public interest law is practised that provide
opportunities for you to gain experience. You may find yourself helping provide legal services to clients who cannot afford a lawyer in a legal aid clinic
or direct service office such as the B.C.
Centre for Elder Advocacy and Support.
You may choose to work with an organization like West Coast Environmental Law or Atira Women’s Resource
Society focusing on law reform efforts
or advocating on behalf of a particular
interest or disadvantaged community.
There are also private practice law firms
where the lawyers define a major portion
of their work as serving the public interest.
This includes lawyers practicing in areas
such as union-side labour law, refugee and
immigration law, Aboriginal rights, human
rights and criminal defence. In addition,

there are opportunities for lawyers to be part
of at a multitude of boards, agencies, commissions or international organizations.
Opportunities to Gain Experience
You can gain advocacy, research and
drafting skills through participation in
moots, many of which involve public interest issues. Working on one of the law
journals at UBC will help you hone your
research, legal analysis and writing skills.
The following programs and courses offer opportunities for you to gain practical experience in a public interest setting.
Public Interest Work Placement Program:
Each year under this program, 6 paid
summer positions are offered exclusively
to UBC Law students with 6 different local and regional public interest organizations. The positions will be posted
in February 2012 with hiring by the organizations completed by late March.
Campus Community Service Programs:
Pro Bono Students Canada-UBC: PBCSUBC offers placements with not-for-profit
community organizations, public interest
groups, lawyers and tribunals working in
pursuit of the “common or public good.”
The placements can involve direct work
with clients, policy review and development, law reform research, drafting of submissions or public legal education literature,
as well as developing and delivering public
legal education seminars and much more.
Placements are usually posted in September, but may arise throughout the
academic year.
For more information visit www.ubcpbsc.com or contact the Student Coordinators at pbsc.
ubc@gmail.com
or
604.822.8009.
Law Students Legal Advice Program:
LSLAP can give you practical exposure to
real clients with real legal issues. You will
learn how to interview clients, research the
law, give advice, draft documents, negotiate with Crown Counsel and other lawyers, prepare for court or tribunal appearances and conduct trials and hearings. You
will also have the satisfaction of knowing
that most LSLAP clients would not have
received help without your efforts. For
more information see the LSLAP website.
Clinics and Externships: UBC Law’s

clinics offer the opportunity for you
to gain credit for your public interest
work while developing practice skills.
First Nations Legal Clinic: This
full-time clinic is located in Gastown
and operates like a law firm, exclusively serving First Nations clients.
Innocence Project: Through work
on wrongful conviction files with designated supervising lawyers, you can
develop valuable research, legal analysis, evidentiary and drafting skills.
Criminal Clinic: This program provides students with an understanding
of the procedures and skills required
to practice criminal law through direct representation of clients under
the supervision of a designated lawyer.
Judicial Externship Program: Students
serve as interns to judges of the BC Provincial Court, working on research, memoranda preparation, attendance at trial and other
judicial processes, editing and other lawrelated tasks of assistance to the judiciary.
LSLAP Credit Program: is available for
students who have participated in a minimum number of LSLAP clinics per term
as a volunteer clinician. Participants receive conduct of several major files over
the academic year involving a trial, hearing or major submission under the supervision of LSLAP’s Supervising Lawyer.
Assistance in Creating Your Own Opportunities: The CSO Public Interest Coordinator, Tracy Wachmann, is available to
help you identify a public interest organization you would like to work for and assist
you in creating a volunteer or paid position that will help you gain practical skills.
Career Services Office Resources
Also, look for UBC’s first Public Interest Legal Careers Guide; a comprehensive resource handbook which is full of
practical suggestions, contact information and sample communications to assist you in building a public interest career, which will be released in October.
Lastly, keep your eye on the Weekly Bulletin for more information on paid and volunteer public interest opportunities as well as
upcoming CSO events and programming.

8

continued from page 4
The Conservative appointed Chairman
of the CRTC (Konrad W. von Finckenstein) has appeared numerous times in the
past few years before the Heritage
Committee asking for much need
ed powers to balance the needs of the
consumer and protect the balance required in a competitive system. Is the
strangling of a new licensee committed to Canadian programming and the
consolidation of influence into fewer
and fewer hands a positive thing for
Canadians? Americans did not think so
when they brought in anti-trust legislation and forced the divestiture of AT&T.
On the one hand, you have the licensee being required by the CRTC to
“must carry”, with all that implies and
requires for balance and fairness, and
on the other hand a BDU which insists
that anyone doing business with them
must sign a draconian affiliate agreement with them that legally forbids one
to sue them no matter how offensive
and anti-competitive the behaviour.
The irony of this whole situation is
that if Canada opened its borders to
true broadcasting, cellular and internet competition, these BDU’s would
be the first to send their lobbyists
to Ottawa to prevent such a move.
Many large corporations today with
large cash flows will have several large law
firms look at a matter for them simply to
prevent the firms’ litigation teams from
being retained to act against the corporations due to conflict of interest rules,
thus reducing the number of competent litigators available to launch a fight.
ERIC: You mentioned that when you
were at law school there was a first
year ethics class. One of the discussions the faculty is having is how to
teach ethics, with the two opposing
poles being a standalone ethics class,
or attempting to fit ethics into most,
if not all courses. Between the two,
do you think there is a better path?
PETER: After the opening ceremony an hour ago, I was speaking with a
UBC professor on the issue of ethics,
and Keith Mitchell of Farris, Vaughan,
Wills & Murphy, who graduated with
me, came up and listened to that same
question being posed to me. Keith was

adamant that “If you don’t have good
sound judgment, it doesn’t matter if you
practice law, or do anything else, you’ll
never make money.” And judgment involves ethics and common sense. If you
really want to be a good lawyer, you have
to have a strong ethical background, because it’s involved in judgment. If you
want to practice law, and be successful
at it, people rely on your good moral
judgment and good ethics-based decisions. This really means that ethics is
at the heart of all courses that lawyers
take and while there may be a stand
alone course, ethics is an intrinsic part
of every course taught in a law school.

ethics is at the heart of
all courses that lawyers
take

ERIC: When you’re speaking of ethics and morals, do you have a shortcut answer as to what that would mean
to you? Do you draw from a religious
background for morals and ethics?
PETER: Fifty to 100 years ago, churches were our community centres for
spiritual, social and physical issues. Institutions such as the YMCA still carry
on these traditions and values but with
less of the formality of institutionalized
religious organizations. My mother registered my twin and I for Boy Scouts
so I still have that sort of ethical feel
for the principles embodied by the
Boy Scouts, and by my parents, such as
diligence, education, hard work, community involvement, respect for the
elderly, etc. Anything that involves improving people’s lives over the long term
is something that I think is worthy.
Competition is critical for choices and
so, I think, for me, the question that Canadians, Americans, and even Europeans have to ask is, are we here for the long
term? Are we going to ensure and enforce checks and balances, to have choices and to have diversity in them, or are
we going to sell everything we’ve got and
leave the debt with the next generation?
I am personally outraged when I see
what we have allowed to be done to
the next generation in terms of government debt, lack of choices, concentration of corporate power and lobbyists, and the resulting effect on our

daily lives, so much so that our elected officials have become completely neutralized.
ERIC: That kind of shifts to the next two
questions. One of the questions was about
family which is, visibly, quite important
to you. You have this and other philanthropic projects. What motivates you?
PETER: Anything that sustains long
term growth and stability and which respects human dignity and rights. The
best projects seem to be those where the
recipients respect their gifts by carrying
out and exceeding their aims and goals
to help others whether it is through education, health, community service etc.
ERIC: Shifting topics, there is the statue
(“Legends Begin” by Allan Houser) that you
donated, and that Kari Streelasky (the Assistant Dean, External Relations) has said is a
piece of work that you were quite attached to.
PETER: Well, my attachment is to the
story of the artist who created it and the
exceptional quality of his work, not just
“Legends Begin”, www.allanhouser.com.
The native artist underscores how an individual can overcome adversity, nurture his passion and talents and spread
his knowledge by teaching others. It is
about doing the right thing for the long
term good and following your passions
and teaching those that come after you.
Allan Houser’s works in general are
classical/abstract with all the passion,
spirit and endurance shown in the faces.
ERIC: I think that’s probably it for questions, is there anything you’d like to add?
PETER: My twin brother and I came
from a background where if you knew
something wasn’t right and stunk, you
said something and tried to change it.
I think like my father and my mother
in a lot of respects. I have taken what
I can from their strengths. They were,
collectively, an inspiration to us. Some
of the things that go on today, in business, our father would never do, and
would never have allowed to be done.
So, for me, it’s important that people understand that people rely on lawyers to have good
judgment and a solid ethical background.
I’d say, in BC, most of the lawyers I know
are essentially ethical and respectful, but
I’ve been places in the world where it
isn’t like that at all, where it’s not about
what’s right, it’s about making money.
ERIC: Thank you.